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Posts Tagged ‘fest’

Poptent party at SXSW

Posted by Beardy on March 8th, 2011

If you’re a filmmaker you probably already know that March is South By Southwest season.  The Film & Interactive portion of the fest starts this friday and the music portion begins on the 15th.  I got to visit SXSW’s home base of Austin, TX last summer and it really was a great town.  People talk it up so much that I thought the place would turn out to be overrated but no, it was straight up fun on a bun.  And didn’t get to do half the things I had hoped to.  (I did eat many a delicious taco though)

I’m kind of into film fests and I’ve always wanted to go to SXSW and dangit, I should have planned on going this year.  Some musician friends are doing a showcase and some other friends are flying in from Amsterdam for the fest.  So I had a few good reasons to go.  Turns out I also could have gone to this party being sponsored by Poptent on the 14th:

Click on the poster for a little more info.  It looks like a few of the Poptent staff will be at the event.  So if you’re a member of the site it’ll be kind of cool to meet the people-versions of the photos that approve and “like” your submissions.

I know that the contest site Mofilm is also going to have some kind of presence at SXSW this year but I haven’t read anything specific.  I saw that they picked some of their past winners and gave them free trips so they could document the fest.  If anyone’s heard anything about other video contest entities doing anything at the fest this year, lemme know.

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LG’s $100,000 HD film fest winner

Posted by Beardy on February 2nd, 2010

LG

It seems like this contest started taking entries forever ago, but the “Life’s Good” HD film fest sponsored by LG has finally announced their grand prize winner.  Contestants were supposed to submit films that were shot in HD and followed the theme of “Life’s Good.”  There were several categories (sports, fashion etc) but it was a narrative film that took the top prize of $100,000.

The LG winner is called Nuit Blanche and was directed by Arev Manoukian.  Here’s the official description:

“Nuit Blanche explores an experience many of us have lived before – a fleeting yet powerful connection with a perfect stranger. Set in a dark cobblestone street in the 1950’s, a man catches the gaze of a woman in a cafe across the street. This split-second moment becomes suspended in time, as the two gravitate towards each other in a hyper real fantasy where nothing can hold them back.”

I just watched all 3 minutes and 22 seconds of the short film and all I can say is “F*CK YES!”  I have seen some amazing video contest entries before but this is hands down the most impressive one I’ve ever come across.  It starts off slow but then gets awesome and finishes beautifully.

Grand Prize Winner.  Prize: $100,000

That’s outrageous, isn’t it?  My only grievance is that it seems like this was a pre-existing short film and that it wasn’t shot specifically for the contest like so many of the entries were.  The credits say that the short was “made in part with the support of the National Film Board of Canada’s filmmaker assistance program.”  In fact, it looks like the short was produced by the very successful production company, Spy Films.  Oh well, it’s still fantastic.  I mean, did you notice that the guy blew a piece of glass out of his way there at the end?  All those fancy effects and expensive production values and that little moment is what made the short for me.  It just goes to show that even in the CGI era we live in, the best films are those that use effects to express fundamentally human and universal ideas and emotions.

If you want to see just how much post-production work actually went into this short, click here to watch a video about the Making of Nuit Blance.

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NY Film Festival Trailer selected

Posted by Beardy on September 28th, 2009

If you’ve ever been to a film fest you’ve probably seen a short little video bumper promoting the festival that run before the screening starts. They’re always very unique and fun. Well the New York Film Festival needed a promo bumper for this year’s festival so they put out an open call for submissions on poptent. This call was kind of unusual for the site since the fest is non-profit and there would be no cash award. However, the fest did give out a “super” VIP package and the selected festival trailer will be shown throughout the New York Film Festival and will then be shown in theaters year round before other screenings.

That right there is actually a pretty sweet prize. Getting a film into the NY festival would be great for anyone’s filmmography but to have the festival as a client and to have your work screen in theaters and in Lincoln Center(!) would be a really nice resume builder. Here’s the video that was chose by The New York Film Festival:

That’s really slick. I like it. If you want to see something crazy though, check out this video that was one of the finalists:

That video was created by three US Marines while serving in Afghanistan! More details about the guys who made it can be found here. To see more submitted videos, check out Poptent’s blog: http://www.poptent.net/blog/

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